Retired Middle East Expert Holds General Milley Responsible for Option To Assassinate Soleimani

Jan. 7, 2020 (EIRNS)—In a Jan. 6 posting on his “Sic Semper Tyrannis” blog entitled “Trump Moves To Unite the Middle East! (Irony),” retired Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) officer Col. W. Patrick Lang offers an informed view of the Trump Administration’s steps towards Iran of the past few days. He writes that he “had hoped” that Trump’s decision to kill Qasem Soleimani was

“something pulled out of his fundament either inspired by war movies or on the recommendation of ‘our greatest ally’ [likely meaning Israel—ed.] but I am informed that in fact some idiot in the DoD included this option in the list of possibilities that was briefed to the CinC in Florida.”

Lang noted that when the President demands options, the Joint Chiefs of Staff prepare a list of options backed by documentation that enables the President to approve one and sign the operational order. “Trump himself chose the death option,” Lang wrote. “I would hold General Milley (CJCS) personally responsible for not striking this option from the list before it reached the CinC.”

In a second observation, Lang described the Iranians as a “subtle people.” In his view, “they will bide their time whilst working out the ‘bestest’ way to inflict some injury on the U.S. and/or Israel.  When the retaliation comes it will be imaginative and painful.”

Lang also warns that the U.S. troops, scattered in small groups about Iraq, are vulnerable to a Shi’ite uprising should the U.S. administration refuse to withdraw them from that country. Those troops, and their comrades in eastern Syria are also vulnerable logistically. “Iraq is a big country.  It is a long and lonely drive from Kuwait for re-supply from there or evacuation through there,” Lang writes.  “The same thing is true of the desert route to Jordan.

Finally, Lang concludes: “Trump’s strategy appears to be based on the concept that the Iraqis will submit to our imperial demands. ‘We will see.’ ”